Goliath- Hebrew/Jewish GiantGiant"Champion of Gath"

The Valley of Elah

The Philistine and Israelite armies faced each other across a ravine, neither willing to charge down the slope. The Philistines sent a champion to settle the war by single combat. Goliath of Gath emerged armored from head to foot: a bronze helmet, a coat of mail weighing five thousand shekels, bronze greaves, and a spear with a shaft like a weaver's beam. A shield-bearer walked before him.

For forty days, morning and evening, the giant bellowed his challenge: choose a man, send him down, and let the loser's people serve the winner. He mocked Israel and their God. No one answered. Saul, who stood head and shoulders above every man in Israel, stayed in his tent.

The Shepherd

David arrived at the camp carrying provisions for his older brothers. He heard Goliath's challenge, saw the soldiers scatter, and asked a question no warrior had thought to ask: "Who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?"

His brothers told him to go back to his sheep. He persisted until he was brought before Saul. The king objected: David was a boy, and Goliath had been a man of war since his youth. David answered with his credentials. When a lion or a bear attacked his flock, he pursued it, struck it down, and rescued the lamb from its mouth. If the animal turned on him, he seized it by the jaw and killed it. The God who delivered him from the lion and the bear would deliver him from the Philistine.

The Stone and the Sword

Saul offered David his own armor. David tried it on, took it off. He chose five smooth stones from the streambed, dropped them in his pouch, and walked out to meet the giant with nothing but a sling.

Goliath's contempt was immediate: "Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?" He cursed David by his gods.

David answered: "You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied."

As Goliath advanced, David ran toward him. He fitted a stone, slung it, and struck the Philistine in the forehead. The stone sank into bone. Goliath fell face down. David stood over him, drew the giant's own sword, and cut off his head. The Philistine army broke and ran. Israel pursued them to the gates of Ekron.

The Sword at Nob

Goliath's sword ended up in priestly keeping at the shrine of Nob, wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. Years later, when David fled from King Saul desperate and unarmed, the priest Ahimelech offered him the only weapon available: the sword of Goliath the Philistine. "There is none like it," David said. "Give it to me."

The Giants of Gath

Goliath was not the last giant of his city. 2 Samuel records four more Philistine warriors of enormous stature, all descended from the Raphah. Ishbi-benob, whose bronze spearhead weighed three hundred shekels, nearly killed the aging David before Abishai struck him down. An unnamed warrior with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot taunted Israel until David's nephew Jonathan killed him. Joshua preserves their origin: when Joshua cut off the Anakim, the ancient race of enormous people, remnants survived in Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod.

Ruth and Orpah

The Talmud in Sotah 42b records that Goliath descended from Orpah, Ruth's sister-in-law. When Naomi urged her daughters-in-law to return to Moab, Ruth clung to her. Orpah turned back. Orpah bore four sons who became mighty warriors, and Goliath was the first among them. David descended from Ruth. In the Valley of Elah, the faithfulness of one Moabite woman and the departure of another met in their descendants.